Virgin v Jeremy Corbyn: what rail passengers think of Traingate – as it happened
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The Guardian took the 11am London-Newcastle train the Labour leader says lacked free seats. Follow the updates on our trip, people’s reactions – and whether we got a seat
So what have we learned from today? Well, I didn’t struggle to get a seat on the 11am train from London’s King’s Cross to Newcastle, but that doesn’t disprove Jeremy Corbyn’s experience, and it doesn’t mean that the UK’s rail system does not lack capacity.
It is well known that there are sections of the network with capacity problems – it is one of the stated reasons for building HS2 – and no one regularly using Southern rail at the moment can be happy with the service they are getting.
Is #Traingate a silly season story? Absolutely.
Are Virgin Trains running a flawless system on the east coast mainline? No. And while staff implied our journey was pretty much the same as always, we did not prove that this route is not usually crowded.
Do people have questions about Corbyn’s media operation after this? Yes, they do.
And are they the same people who were already saying Corbyn was incompetent? Very probably.
But I hope this has made people think a bit more about the uses of CCTV by a private company running a train franchise on behalf of the state. And while lots of you wondered about live-blogging a train journey, I can’t think of a better place to interview the people travelling on that route.
Thank you for your comments below the line and contributions; I’m now off to catch the train home. I have not reserved a seat for the trip back, so fingers crossed.
Now, I could live blog the journey back to London. But I think that might be too exciting for you all. Here are some of the things you’ve been saying in the comments in the last hour
My colleague Jessica Elgot writes that Jeremy Corbyn is not the first leader to find train travel leaves plenty of opportunities for blunders. Remember George Osborne being rumbled after sneaking into first class? Or Jeremy Hunt confusing the emergency cord with the flush in a Virgin train toilet?
You can read her piece on Thick of It-style gaffes here:
I am reliably informed via social media that the two Adams that I met on the train earlier are definitely called Adam, and are well known as Adam Blampied and Adam Pacitti from WhatCulture who cover wrestling. I have to confess, I sat down next to them because I hadn’t spoken to enough younger people on the train yet, and they were one of the few pairs of younger people who didn’t have headphones on, which always makes for an awkward start to an interview.
So, if you are just joining us, I got the 11am train this morning from Kings Cross to York in order to ask people on it what they thought about #Traingate, Jeremy Corbyn, Virgin Trains, and the idea of renationalising our railways. We picked that because it was the same train that Corbyn got when he made the sitting on the floor video that Virgin are disputing.
I arrived at York around 1pm, and since then I’ve been reading your comments below the line, on Twitter and via GuardianWitness, and trying to reflect how people feel about the story in the live blog. Here’s a selection of recent comments:
As someone who often (2-4 times/month) travels up to Edinburgh from KingsX on the 18:30 or 19:00 on Fridays I really don’t recognise this, at all. The 18:00 and 18:05 on Fridays are hell on wheels, but the later trains are fine. And if your boy knows when he is coming up in advance, surely he’ll be booking seats and super advance tickets (cheaper than the £135 off-peak return fare)? But walk up during peak on a Friday on the ECML is obviously going to be busy ...
Huge thanks for your interest in this live blog, by the way. Obviously travelling to York on the 11am train today was never going to settle the truth about what happened on Jeremy Corbyn’s original trip, but it has been great to get over 3,000 comments talking about the state of UK railways and Corbyn’s policy about it.
A selection of comments to give you the feel of discussion below the line...
Some people see it as a stunt that has back-fired because Corbyn didn’t execute it well enough:
Or that it is a proxy for the misery of supporting the Labour party at the moment
Or that the spin angle on the story is being used to distract from very real issues with the UK’s rail services
This is from Zoë White via GuardianWitness, who thinks trains are astronomically expensive, and the picture isn’t as rosy as train operators would like to make out.
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